


At the Crossroads

by Neffectual



Series: one step forward, two steps back [8]
Category: BritWres, Progress Wrestling
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 04:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: There's a time when a man has to choose if he's a demon, or just addicted to something that can never give back what he puts in.





	At the Crossroads

There’s something to be said for coming back to the same old place, coming back to the same stale air and musty scent of places that aren’t taken care of quite well enough to make them stop smelling like they’ve been host to a lot of bodies, all in various states of intoxication, all too warm to cease dripping perspiration onto the surfaces. But they’re places he knows how to walk, the way to talk, what it takes to back something up, and when you’re best to take the slap on the back with a nod and half a smile, rather than say what’s boiling in your brain.

The persona’s been likened to a devil, and the thought makes him smile – not the real smile, genuine pleasure to see an old friend, but the one he uses in front of crowds, the one that’s half smirk and all sin, no surprise at whatever it is that he sees. The one that’s sharp, wolf in front of a flock, choosing which victim will be next, like the jungle cat stalking the cage at the zoo, plotting bloody and violent revenge should it ever get free. To be a devil… that, truly, would be immortality, would be to know darkness from the opposite side, as something to chase and not that chases him in the early hours of the morning, when sleep escapes him and idle hands make for the devil’s work. He keeps his hands busy, just in case, following instructions, simple jobs for simple hours, and the time eventually slips away.

The one that’s always got him is the idea of the crossroads demon, the place you go to sell your soul in order to achieve greatness in what you want to be – music, mainly, that was the tradition, but he’s never been a musician, for all that he enjoys it. It’s the very idea of it, that you go to the crossroads and call out to a demon, that he could have exchanged a soul – crumpled, soiled, dirtied with use and misuse and the way humans cope with time and grief and agony – for something as fleeting and damning as success. But in a way, wrestling is its own crossroads demon, and he comes back time after time, selling a little bit more for a little less return, every midnight that he can manage. How many midnights – a thousand? Ten thousand? And every time, he comes back to it, asking for just one more night, one more night when the sinews will hold and the tendons won’t twang, one more night where the crowd will roar and he can feel their noise mingle with the blood on his face.

He wonders, sometimes, late night drives home with a desperate yearning for bed, for comfort, for being horizontal without having to remember to count in his head, whether he could find one of these supposed demons. America, he thinks, that’s where they live, that’s the land of demons and the dream that success is just waiting for you to give up enough to snatch it from the nimble jaws of fate. He thinks of stopping, next time he’s there, at a crossroads at midnight, and asking… but he’s not sure there’s a soul to bargain with anymore, or that there ever really was, and anyway, he’s never been good at reading the small print. Better to keep going back to his own demon, his own fickle goddess of fate, and keep seeing what can be done, every night, every midnight, to keep himself where he is. Better to tread water than to drown, he reminds himself, even though it’s sometimes hard work to stay afloat.

But he is who he is, and there’s a gravity in that, there’s a weight to that which he’s clawed out on his own, to the grave he’s dug for himself when it’s finally time to lie down and wait for the darkness to consume everything. To think of everything he might not have done, had he been somewhere else, had that crossroads demon led elsewhere, had he not learned the power that comes with choosing not to be on the side of good, or the side of evil, but making choices, every day. How it’s easier to wear a thick skin to hide the softer heart, how it’s smarter to snarl than smile, or they’ll never leave you alone, how a choice is made based on the information at hand, and that he chooses, every midnight, to be on canvas, to be driving home in the dark, to bleed, to lose, to win.  
That’s the thing about devils – they can’t choose their nature. But people, well. People always have to choose what they’re willing to give for what they’re going to get.


End file.
